Sometimes all I do is watch the sky

[raven]

I can't write.

It's been two weeks now since I wrote anything that I didn't immediately delete. I don't know what the problem is. I hate it, whatever is is. There's so much disjointedness to everything I put down on paper lately; needless repetition of words and no link between the things I want to say, and while I know writing style is not the major selling point for a Chemistry analysis, I hate to read over what I've written and know it's bad. Just pointless and mechanical, and with no real life to it. Flat writing is all right in science, but not so good in English. We've got coursework next week from all accounts, and I don't want to write it like this.

I have nothing to write about and no good music to listen to, so a lot of the things that get me out of bed in the morning are retreating into the shadows and I don't like that. Regarding the music, I think I must blaspheme and say that I really don't like Something Corporate's second album (third? does Audioboxer count?) very much. It's called North, and before giving it to shipperkitten for her birthday, Hannah and I copied it several times and distributed it. My own copy is playing as I write this, and while there are songs I like - this one particularly, as it's short and sweet and beautiful - not many have launched themselves at me as truly musical-chill-inducing. I'll grant that a song like Konstantine probably only appears once in the lifetime of a band - U2's With or Without You comes to mind - but all the songs seem to blend together. As said before, Watch the Sky is good, and so is As You Sleep, but, eh. I can't buy any CDs at the moment because I have absolutely no money whatsover - anything I do have will probably go on Christmas presents. I now know what I'm getting for purplerainbow, hathy_col and (probably) shipperkitten. The others are all as yet undecided. I don't mind, because I don't really mind shopping. But as for Christmas... meh.

I don't have anything more to say, really. Nothing has happened today at all.

Comments

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

It's been two weeks now since I wrote anything that I didn't immediately delete. I don't know what the problem is. I hate it, whatever is is.

And whatever it is, it must be going around. *beats head against desk* My sympathies.

(Dropped you an email about the Populli situation, by the way.)

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling: it's particularly frustrating when you're used to writing coming naturallyand to being a good writer (which you really are - I know that just reading your journal). But you have to remember that never in the history of the world has there been a good writer who didn't sometimes have huge agonies trying to write. Sooner or later, you hit a stumbling block.

I've just started a PhD, and I wrote easily as an undergraduate, and then realised just around the time that I was graduating that whilst my writing was still OK, my sentence structure was just awful. I had clauses and sub-clauses and embedded clauses and I couldn't get through a single sentence without breaking it up six different ways. Whilst I was doing my Masters, I consciously worked at making my sentences much more fluid, and sometimes just shorter, and I'm much happier with it now.

We had a class on writing techniques the other week, and there were people there who thought it was a load of rubbish, and that Good Writing was something that you could either just do or you would never be able to do. Writing techniques and formal structures come in incredibly handy when you have those times that you just can't write, and they make your writing so much better in the long run.

I'd advise trying to make yourself write, and not throwing stuff away or deleting it if it really doesn't work - start a new document or a new sheet, but don't actualy get rid of what you've written. Break things down with as many subheadings as you can, even though you can get rid of them later if necessary. But mostly just remember that if you're serious about writing, sometimes it's going to be difficult, and it's going to be something you need to work at. The tricks and structures you learn to help you write when it seems impossible will also improve your writing when it's easy and fluent.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

And my sympathies straight back at you. This, for lack of a better word, sucks.

But I'm glad the Populli (which I cannot spell, argh) situation is almost resolved.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your kind words. They're especially encouraging when I really feel like throwing my pen out the window. I've taken your advice and stopped deleting things, at least - I now have a seven-hundred-word Discworld snippet I'm moderately happy with, which I would otherwise have deleted after the first two paragraphs.

I would love to do that class. I know absolutely nothing about formal writing techniques - I've never been taught anything at all about the subject. I just pick up stuff as I go along - what works, what doesn't work, that kind of thing, but it's all primarily instinctive. Making it conscious is much more difficult.

Do you mind my asking what you're doing a PhD in?

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I would love to do that class. I know absolutely nothing about formal writing techniques - I've never been taught anything at all about the subject. I just pick up stuff as I go along - what works, what doesn't work, that kind of thing, but it's all primarily instinctive. Making it conscious is much more difficult.

Yeah, me too. I don't think I really started to think about it consciously until I was in the last year of my degree, when I read my then-girlfriend's essays and just loved how flowing her style was. So I made a concerted effort to write sentences without semi-colons, which I think was about the first time I've consciously worked on my style.

My PhD topic is - aargh. I've only been doing it six weeks! I don't have to know yet! According to my proposal, it's on the representation of secretaries and typists in French and German romantic novels in the first half of the 20th century. The idea is that someone invents the typewriter, and then suddenly you get huge numbers of women joining the white collar workforce, which had never happened before. And then you get lots of cheapie romance novels featuring typists who fall in love with their bosses and live happily ever after.

So it's something to do with how popular culture reflects and helps the world adjust to socio-economic changes, and yet at the same time it's very conservative. Or something. My supervisor seems to have a much better idea of it than I do. Aargh.